Triskaidekaphilion
by Ellen Weaver
Summary: Illuminated text transcription of a travelogue, complete with illustrated maps, describing various and sundry precincts of that very Labyrinth famous in song and film.
1. Prologue, Epigraphs, and Introduction

**Triskaidakaphilion**

_Author's note: "triskaidekaphilion," "engendered or having in its origins the number thirteen," is not the original title of this document. The document itself was discovered being without title, a paperback "book" without a cover, having on each leaf a folding map with places of interest highlighted, and on the opposite side printer's notes of places of interest described. This document was discovered in the used-book section of a local St. Vincent de Paul's store in Oregon, United States of America._

_The contents of the "book," if it can be called so, or perhaps "annotated map" are hereby reproduced by the original finder to nearly exact specifications, although errors in translation or apprehension of indecipherable script must be taken into account. In addition, handwritten notes, where decipherable, have been here transposed faithfully and intercut, without warning, into the body of the original text._

_n.b.: Purchasers of this volume are reminded that thirteen is considered either a highly lucky number or highly unlucky, depending upon what one takes for granted._

_n.b: Author would like also to note that she is neither the creator nor the owner of such things as described herein._

**First presented here are the epigraphs of Precinct One through Precinct Six.  
**

_All the Labyrinth is parsed by various precincts, places in and of themselves. Some of these precincts are guarded, some unguarded. Some are places of terror, and other of delight. All are places good for acquiring wisdom, but the amount gained depents greatly upon the person learning the lesson.  
_

_Here for your delictation are thirteen precincts, presented one after another, in high anthropological style and not nearly in linear order.  
_

_Also described in this fatuously indulgent travelogue are various entrances and egresses between the Underground and various other worlds, but with no guarantees given regarding travel attempted._

_Caveat Emptor._

**Precinct the First: The Catacomb Way**

In which we discover the various roots of the Labyrinth, both entymological, and mythological; a brief revelation of previous guardians of the Labyrinth; an heroic episode featuring one Jareth, Goblin King.

**Precinct the Second: The Scrimshaw Wood**

In which is described the difference between "forest" and "wood," the first being wild and the second domestic; a history of how the wild forest became a semi-domesticated wood; various denizens of that strange place; an explanation of the appearance of copious glitter.

**Precinct the Third: The Royal Road**

In which is described the principal "direct route" through the Labyrinth, usually presented to the traveler as an option opposite of "certain death," uniquely fascinating as potentially encompassing both options; history of construction and disuse; brief description of tollhouses, surveyor's errors, triumphal arches, and martial plazas.

**Precinct the Fourth: The Disobedient Topiary **

In which is thoroughly explained how it is that topiary hedges are far more obstinate than stone walls; copious notes on the guardian of that place, mention of various entrances and egresses to realms decidedly NOT human; discussion of various and sundry inhabitants and interlopers.

**Precinct the Fifth: The Junkmidden Orbit**

In which is described the origins of the midden-piles which ring the Goblin City; a theory as to how the junk preceded the Goblins and not the reverse; notes on an archaeological dig; interview with one of those Goblins who undertake the collection and sorting of such junk; one author's experience while held in captivity with a flowerpot, a ragdoll, and half a game of Travel Yatzee.

**Precinct the Sixth: The Goblin City**

In which is described That Very Goblin City, of primary fame for preceding the Castle which lies beyond it; historical origins of that city; how it is that the Goblin City's foundation postdates that of the Castle; Brief and disturbing notes on the domestic life of the Goblin Citizen.


	2. Precinct the First: The Catacomb Way

**Precinct the First: The Catacomb Way**

_In which we discover:_

_ the various roots of the Labyrinth, both etymological, and mythological_

_ a brief revelation of previous guardians of the Labyrinth_

_an heroic episode featuring one Jareth, Goblin King._

The amorphous nature of the Labyrinth, shifting here and there and everywhere, has its roots by necessity in several places. It means the stepped passageways and under-cities of mighty Knossos, in the ephemeral but true twistings of the mandalas laid with precise care on the mudflats of the Ganges, and the convoluted contemplations of those crusaders who wished to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem but had to console themselves, by necessity, with walking on their knees a spiral path in their gardens. Here presented is one such route and meaning of the Labyrinth, that most famous one.

The Labyrinth lies underground but others might say the Labyrinth itself is the Underground, part and parcel of that kingdom which lies unnoticed by the greater part of the human population. In ancient days, there was a great Serpent (for clarity's sake, not the serpent of Eden but perhaps a second cousin twice removed and certainly related to the poison-toothed creature which gnawed the Tree Yggdrasil, and the Delphic Oracle's pet snake).

In brief, a Serpent, whose purpose in life was the same sort of purpose of any other mythological snake-creature: to traverse between what is and what is not. This particular Serpent, the serpent of the Labyrinth, twined itself back and forth between the mortal world and the other worlds; the interstitial space of its passages became, in time, a mirrored honeycomb of interlaced passages. Holes soon developed, and people and dreams and ideas and bottlecaps and shoelaces and anything and everything not carefully monitored fell through. Not that the Serpent cared. The brief space between what was known (because the second a person fell through, that which had previously been within the realm of the mysterious became part of the real) and that which was unknown grew quite large. Like worms through a carcass, the Serpent had worn through that middle realm until it was full hollow: a kingdom waiting for the idea of a king, a place of wisdom and clarity wanting an interpreter.

Some things which were lost were retrieved, and some other things, not wishing to be retrieved, fell still further. In any event, most of the holes eventually healed themselves and the Serpent, distracted and bemused by the too-large and too-real space opening up between Mystery and Reality, retreated further into the depths of the unknown. Also, it was a little pissed off that people kept trying to give it a name or ask it questions without giving equal measure back.

But the signs of its presence remained. The bedrock of land above it was laced with the signs of its passage, outcroppings of stone and rock worn smooth by regular travel. And underneath the illusory skin of the "ground" of the Underground, interlaced and tubular tunnels growing less connected, less visible, less benign if a brave traveler chose to go deeper.

This was the easiest way into the Labyrinth in elder days though, as we shall immediately discover, not the easiest way out.

In those days, various beings, attempting to prove their wisdom and fitness, would enter into the Labyrinth and there have congress with the Serpent. These battles rarely ended in a satisfactory manner for the interlopers, usually finding themselves wise only by incorporation with the Serpent: in short, being eaten. One interlude in particular is of interest for readers here, that being the contest of strength between the Serpent and he who is known now to all educated parties as Jareth, Goblin King.

In those days, mind, he was not a king.

He was one of those unfortunate fallen, through the sunny and bright lands and painfully drawn, like iron to a magnet, down into the dark and serpentine tunnels of the Underground.

"Best me in combat," the Serpent hissed to him, "And we shall tell you much to your advantage. Falter, and you are mine."

As the challenged, the not-yet-Goblin-King had the right to choice of weapons. And since he was young and not very strong, but had sharp wits and a poetic mouth, he chose a contest of riddles.

"Let us begin," said the Serpent.  
_"It is greater than God and more evil than the devil. The poor have it, the rich need it and if you eat it you'll die._"

"Nothing," replied Jareth. "Nothing is greater, nothing more evil, the poor have nothing and the rich eat nothing. If you eat nothing, you die. But I don't intend to become nothing, though there seems to be copious amounts of it here. My turn:

_My life can be measured in hours,  
I serve by being devoured.  
Thin, I am quick  
Fat, I am slow  
Wind is my foe._"

"A candle," said the serpent. And as it said so, Jareth drew one forth and lit it, casting weird light on the tunnels below. This was a clever trick, to make substantial something out of the Serpent's pendulous answers. In those days, Jareth was clever but not necessarily wise.

The serpent asked, _"Say my name and I disappear. What am I?_"

"Silence," answered Jareth. "Some say it's golden, but I disagree. And you can't win with cojuring silence, or you'll lose this game--riddles must be answered. Now attemt this:

_At the sound of me, men may dream  
Or stamp their feet  
At the sound of me, women may laugh  
Or sometimes weep."_

"Music," murmured the serpent. Jareth laughed and there were golden notes in that laugh, and riddles became lyrics.

This continued for some time. At the turn of every question, Jareth was able to invoke some item to his aid, so at the end of the course, he was well-dressed, well-fed, warm, and strong, and the labyrinthine sub-Underground echoed with bursts of music, a cheerful place instead of a daunting one.

These are the natures of the last two riddles.

The serpent asked:  
_"Until I am measured  
I am not known,  
Yet how you miss me  
When I have flown."_

"Time," laughed Jareth. "And it's high time I left you and your fine company, and you will know it when I ask you this last riddle: _The more I take, the more I leave behind._"

The serpent was caught off guard. This was a riddle it did not understand. But although it could be cruel, it was no cheat, and it invited the young biped to take the tunnel to the left, where he should come out again where he had arrived.

"Give us the answer," it demanded of him.

Jareth lowered his candle, showing the earth disturbed by his feet. "Footsteps." A trail of them. I may sometime return. When I do, matters will play out differently."

* * *

The goblins and the device together known as "The Cleaners" were established in the first year of Jareth Goblin King's rule. Some academics insist that The Cleaners are simply there to make gravy hash out of unwise travelers, but others are persuaded that the purpose of The Cleaners is manifold: that the Goblin King himself is afraid of some great creature which may still inhabit the twining tunnels of the sub-Labyrinth, that something dangerous might still be down there.


	3. Precinct the Second: The Scrimshaw Wood

**Precinct the Second: The Scrimshaw Wood**

In which is described:

the difference between "Forest" and "wood," the first being wild and the second domestic

a history of how the wild forest became a semidomesticated wood

various denizens of that strange place

an explanation of the appearance of copious glitter.

The roots of the Labyrinth go deep, deep, down into the very foundations of the Underground. The stone corridors and brick-and-mortar reinforcements of the Catacomb Way stop at a distance to the East; here the winding tunnels and passages are stopped up by the roots of the Scrimshaw Wood. In their confined spaces, these trees speak to each other, and their kin.

* * *

Let no one doubt, the trees have language, and are more than conversant with the nuances of human speech.

But the trees of the Scrimshaw Wood are not native to the Labyrinth--it could be argued that NOTHING is native to the Labyrinth--they first had their beginnings in the world of men.

A few short years after William the Conqueror came to rule the isles to the west, changing the people, the language, and the landscape forever, one of the new men, speaking _en francais_ and jealous of his own vainglory, walked out to inspect his wood.

Sir Walter Scott has recorded for us the difference in meaning between "forest" and "wood" in his novel _Ivanhoe_: When a conquering nation comes to a new place, things which had native names in a language which gave honor to those creatures are switched to words which hint instead at the potential profit they may provide: thus deer becomes "venison" and mountain becomes "stone" and land becomes "field acerage" and forest becomes "wood."

A forest is a mystery, a labyrinth in and of itself. A wood is a place where trees are harvested.

Paying no attention to the mysteries of the forest, this newlymade nobleman was more interested in the profit that might be provided from them. There was one tree in particular he'd heard of, straight and true, a solid piece of pedunculate English Oak, never coppiced. This tree was rumored to be of indecipherable age, perhaps a young sapling even when Christ himself walked the world in mortal form.

He was a bit in awe of it, this tree which was a great thing in and of itself. The trunk was too wide for three men to circle arms around, and the topmost leaves seemed to scrape the ceiling of the heavens. And there around it, its brother trees, near equal as great and tall. Truly what a sight! But in a moment the impressiveness of the forest itself was overcome with concupiscent greed. What was the forest compared to the glory of ships and castles which could be built out of solid English timber, not to mention the yellow gold in which he would be paid.

There was a man in the woods, all dressed in springtime colors: the black earth, the gray lichen, the delicate translucent blues of the early flowers. The style of his dress, if not the colors, marked him out as one of high rank, and a Norman. He bowed when the nobleman saw him, then resumed his former attitude, standing on one foot, letting the weight of the great tree sustain him.

The specifics of their conversation then come down to this: the man in the forest asked that the trees not be cut down, for it was a special place, for dancing and trysting and celebration. And the nobleman wasn't interested in such things. "For," as it is recorded he said, "These trees are on my land and I may dispense with them in any way I deem fit."

"And if they were not on your land?"

The nobleman acknowledged that such would be a different matter but was in any case immaterial to the discussion.

They parted courteously.

At twilight, the in-between time, the trees had a susurrating conversation of leaves and reflected light. The stranger in the woods, the uncrowned King, was also there.

"We will die," said the trysting tree, with a great degree of solemn sorrow. "Seven hundred and sixty-two rings have I, and that is a ripe and good age. But my brother trees, and our sons, they have not so many. I do not wish to live without them."

The siblings and offspring touched, gently, branchtips to branchtips, sighing sadly at the way of things.

"Need it be so?" asked one of the younger oaks, two hundred and forty-seven rings old. "Surely the uncrowned King has some remedy for our misfortune."

Sitting on a boulder, which itself was sitting cradled in the roots of the trees deep under the earth, the uncrowned King thought before he spoke.

"Down in the Underground, there is a land serene," he said. "You might live there, live without the sunlight, but also live without the fear of men. I could show you the way."

"We would be highly obligated."

"And you would need to prepare for a limitless exile. As I said, there is no sunlight."

More whispered sighs of dismay from the listening trees. Live without the sunlight? Exile forever?

"And us, don't forget us," grumbled the mosses and lichens and fungus and ferns, clustered roundabout the skirts of the trees. "You must take us with you, we will die without you." And they suckled close to the trees for comfort.

The eldest tree felt down in his roots that this was a perilous but favorable idea. "Do we not speak the language of air and light? I say we beckon the light to us. Where we are, it will be, even if it is not, strictly speaking, the light of the sun. I am willing to go."

This was very bravely spoken. Trees do not travel. They dance and speak, but long journeys are rarely made after their seeds sprout. Oak trees in particular are homebodies.

But they are also sovereigns, governing themselves and their environs with great care. Each tree is a King, but usually a king among equals. Every tree in the trysting grove made its decision. Every tree decided the adventure would be taken.

If the nobleman had come to his woods during the fortnight which followed, he would have seen a particularly uncanny sight. Oak trees in spring put forth strange heavy fruit, orbs which glowed with the golden light of the sun. At the close of the second week, the fruit burst in a shower of sunlight sparks, dousing the trees with infinitesimal shards. Then the trees themselves burst, moving in and upon themselves, turning themselves inside out, disappearing with soft percussive pops.

A week after that, the nobleman returned to find that his wood was now only a slaggy claypit, a cavity in the surface of the forest. He was first enraged, then perplexed, then finally accepting of his loss.

* * *

The bark of the trees in the Scrimshaw Wood is coated with a thick cracked resin, giving each tree the appearance of being coated in slime or glitter, depending on the light. This resin has been traced through in ancient days by the bodies of snails and sundry arboreal creatures, giving the woods the appearance of having been written upon in some eldritch speech. They are among the first of the Labyrinth's populations, and are exceedingly boastful of their powers and properties. The trees of the Scrimshaw Wood claim that the light which comes within the Labyrinth comes at their call, and disappears when night is needful. It is possible that the trees, ancient creatures all, are more than a little senile in their old age because day and night are not regular in the Underground.

* * *

Every tree has the gift of language.

In the winter, the Scrimshaw Wood sends up messages to their daughter trees in the world above. And those trees there, in autumn, send down down love letters written in the skeletal skeins of their discarded leaves. Sometimes the King still walks there, especially at dusk. He is no longer uncrowned, but the trees of the Scrimshaw Wood love him no less for that.


	4. Precinct the Third: The Royal Road

**Precinct the Third: The Royal Road**

In which is described:

the principal "direct route" through the Labyrinth, usually presented to the traveler as an option opposite of "certain death"

--uniquely fascinating as potentially encompassing both options

a history of construction and disuse

a brief catalogue of tollhouses, surveyor's errors, triumphal arches, and martial plazas

.

.

.

Even the most ignorant tourist of the Labyrinth knows that there is a way to the center. It is simply the center, not a fortification; although the Castle may present a puzzle unto itself, its proper doors are neither locked nor guarded. The Castle, in any event, came later than the Royal Road.

"Never go that way," cautions the Worm, one of several small creatures whose duties it is to watch and warn travelers against the Royal Road. The two guards of the postern gate, old fighting men long past their prime, comfortable in their sinecure, say the same. "One door leads to the center of the Labyrinth and the other one to Certain Death."

Of course, it is all one door, one road. It is the aorta of the Labyrinth's heart, and it is fearsomely dangerous.

No one sets foot upon the Royal Road and lives... not while moving towards the center. Like that vigorous artery, it is something which carries you away from the center, away from your life if you are not careful.

It does lead straight to the castle, that much is true.

It was not built for the Goblin King.

In the middle time between the founding of the world and the building of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, there was a King who asked of God only to be wise. They called him Solomon, and he was himself the son of David giant-killer, and Bathsheba, over whose water-caressed limbs David saw fit to do covetous murder.

Solomon asked only to be wise, and so it is perhaps no surprise that something of his story is appendaged to the Labyrinth, which is itself a place good for attaining wisdom. Perhaps he ran it himself in his youth. All things are possible. In his wisdom he suggested cutting a child in half. Wisdom can be cruel.

It can also be salacious. The Royal Road is all of looking-glass. It mirrors the borders of itself and mirrors the walker upon it. It allows the viewer at the far end of the road to see all people who approach him, twice. If the walker is wearing a dress, a nice upskirt view is provided. This was done on purpose: the mirrored road was designed to allow the viewer to see what was going on under a woman's dress.

When the Queen of Sheba came, she came to test Solomon's wisdom. Wisdom does not preclude caution: hearing that she was intent on making that journey, King Solomon built the mirrored road so that he could easily see under her skirt, from a long way off, too. There may have been an element of voyeuristic lust in the wise King when he ordered such a road to be made, but ostensibly the purpose was practical. King Solomon was afraid that the Queen of Sheba might be concealing owl's feet, bird's limbs under her finery.

Tourists of the Labyrinth may at this point say "Aha!" knowing that the Underground has a sure and certain history of at least one anthropomorphic owl. But listen. The wise King was afraid that Sheba might be of the race of devils of the wilderness, the descendant of Lilith, whose child-killing desire is echoed in the cries of the night-owl. The Queen of Sheba might be a woman and might be a devil, but if a devil, then marked by the sign of the owl. Best to be forewarned, thought the King, and look up her dress to make sure she's not really an owl.

* * *

Is the current Goblin King, King of the Labyrinth, himself related to this enigmatic Queen of Sheba? Isn't he sometimes an owl? Is he the product of that strange arrangement between the sons of Adam and the daughters of Lilith? Or is he something else altogether? Put this question to him carefully.

* * *

King Solomon got a very good look at the visiting Queen's legs (and the rest of her _terra incognita_) as she walked over the surface of the glass, coming to meet him to test the finer points of his wisdom. No bird's feet, but graceful and strong feet, ankles circled by chiming bells. History does not record if she was amused or insulted by the Royal Road he poured out for her. But since she was also wise, it is likely that she knew his intent. And if she knew, did she circumvent his discovery of her true nature? Because owl talons or not, she was no fully mortal creature, that Queen. She is the one person known to have walked that mirrored street towards the center and suffered no harm.

How now is the state of the Royal Road, and how did it come to the Labyrinth? The short answer is that most things come to the Labyrinth given time and the loss of memory. The long answer does not bear telling.

Here it is now, the direct route to the center of the Labyrinth, the shortcut which kills.

See the mirrored road all choked with the dust of disuse. See there the bones of ambitious soldiers and would-be kings, slopping out of the dirt like garbage in a bin. Triumphal arches wave their tattered banners at places along the road, monuments to the glories of men no longer remembered. The Royal Road has sometimes the aura of a battlefield frozen in time, or a sepulcher. Anyone attempting to walk that road to the center is fired by the hellish light of ambition, thinking the heart of the Labyrinth easily won and the castle at the center easily taken. How glorious to be the ruler of such a kingdom! The bones whisper, "Follow, follow, we will follow you to glory." It is foolish to listen to the martial whispers of bones. Foolish to think of the getting and not the having.

Foolishness sometimes looks very much like wisdom. King Solomon, the Wise, wrote many proverbs on this premise. But it comes down to this: it's not wise to be going the wrong way down a one-way Royal Road.

At the very apogee of the Royal Road, the wind has scoured the way clean. Here you can see your own reflection, the mirror of your own dreams, for good or bad. If you look--and no one on two feet has ever avoided looking--your reflection will beckon you towards it. Scrape and dig as much as you want, you cannot get through to the prize that seems to be offered. You might starve to death trying to grasp at the illusion. You might forget your name.

If very lucky, you might decide to follow your reflection back, as it meanders its way back through the Royal Road, sweeping aside centuries of dirt to catch a glimpse of where it goes. You will go all the way back to the beginning of the Labyrinth. You may, if very unlucky, go outside the Labyrinth and good luck finding your way in again by an unfamiliar door.

You may, if your luck is copiously bad, attempt to live upon the Royal Road, gathering together those other lost and lonely souls who have been bewitched by its insubstantial charms. There have been many of these tollbooth militia. All leave behind fortifications, traps, and tripwires to kill or ensnare the unwary. The Royal Road is generally completely empty of anything living, but quite full of the low and cunning devices set by jealous and ambitious vagrant armies. It is best avoided altogether. If it must be traversed, best to walk the path which leads away from the center of the Labyrinth.

Only one creature may be seen regularly traversing the Royal Road without harm, since the days of the Queen of Sheba--and that is Jareth, Goblin King, but only in his owl form, keeping distance between himself and the substance of the Road, going Out.


	5. Precinct the Fourth: Disobedient Topiary

**Precinct the Fourth: The Disobedient Topiary**

In which there are:

thorough explanations on how it is that topiary hedges are far more obstinate than stone walls

copious notes on the guardian of that place

mentions of various entrances and egresses to realms decidedly NOT human

discussions of various and sundry inhabitants and interlopers.

.

.

.

Bushes are incredibly stupid, and while not necessarily malicious, are also stubborn.

The other walls of the Labyrinth are changeable creatures, facing first one way, then another as soon as out of the eye. The Disobedient Topiary will have none of this, and remain firmly in place where they stand. Goblins look askance at such immutability and only those who might acquire mounts dare pace that precinct.

Here is what you will find there: living walls which do not move, and people and creatures who find such lack of movement beguiling. The disobedient topiary are one of the johnny-come-latelies to the Labyrinth, and have a saucy nature. Unlike bushes, the topiary actually fancies itself extremely clever, because it is shaped by other hands and not by its own design. The topiary believes that this laziness is an indication of how very smart it is. See above, re: bushes.

"Ha ha ha!" they giggled when chastised, "We won't move for anybody!" They didn't have the excuse of trees, whose root systems preclude most movement.

Topiary mazes are generally considered to be English in origin, and of the contemplative garden tradition. They were places for lovers to tryst unseen, places for intellectual contemplation, and places of aesthetic rest. Some might refer to these pursuits as "time-wasters."

The Disobedient Topiary is a sieve for such stolen moments. Idle daydreams and summer naps come here. Pleasant time sifts here. There is, naturally, a sundial at the center of this Precinct, but as there is no sun proper in the Labyrinth, the sundial is in actuality a meter to gauge the amount of pleasantly wasted time accruing there, the same way a rain-gauge measures the amount of rainfall.

Here in the precinct of the Disobedient Topiary are some creatures which enjoy the comforts that only a fixed habitation can bring.

Here we find figures all upright, guarding the gates. There is a baker with her rolling pin. Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye, four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. She is one of those who cooks such ornithological pastries and the four and twenty blackbirds are the hours of a dark day. The King is in the counting-house, counting all his money, the maid is in the garden hanging up the clothes, but time ages them all. When the birds emerge they cause bad luck and misfortune. This, like time, happens to all.

The soldiers in their tall hats guarding the gates. They are royal guards but not of a type belonging naturally to the Labyrinth.

See the hangman in his pointed hood. The bodies of dead prisoners in the gibbet can expect to have their mortal coils apecked by ravens and crows, starting with the eyes. They are countable: one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy. Five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never told.

And there is the throne of books. The books themselves deserve some mention. There are nine of these, in appearance as if made from stone. They can be opened, but they are not appetizing fare--other books, as we will see, may be edible. These books, they are the Sybil's books. The Cumaean Sybil, who had regular conversations with serpents, knew a very great deal. Christians say she knew so much that she knew about Jesus Christ some hundreds of years before the Son of Man talked about the fox and his den and the birds and their nests, and she converted to Christianity before there was a Christianity to which to convert. She is ensconced in the Sistine Chapel among the wise men and prophets. This is true. Go and look. Find her picture. She's not exactly attractive but very interesting to look at. Go on. This page will wait for you.

There, you see? The Cumaean Sibyl, a virago with powerful arms. She needed them, to carry around those books. King Tarquin of Rome offered her king's ransom and crown to write these books. When he reneged on the deal, she burnt six of them, one by one in front of his eyes, until he met the full price of the remaining three. The last three books met their burnt siblings some three hundred years later, when they too were kissed by flame--consigned there by a Christian warrior, no less. (Perhaps these books are unappetizing because they have been over-cooked?) In any event, they are here.

Now the throne of prophetic knowledge sits, generally unoccupied, at the heart of the (Disobedient) Topiary Precinct. When it is occupied, the blasphemous rump of the sitter is generally the Old Man, who engages in Socratic dialogues with with his Hat. Knowledge is under his butt and over his head, but he himself is too wise to speak in much besides riddles. It is possible that he himself is Socrates, who used to stand around in the agora, an antique shopping mall, discussing airy nothings of great import with the young men who congregated there. This too was a form of time-wasting, and Socrates' wisdom may have trickled down into this Precinct along with the moments which contained it.

"The way forward is sometimes the way back," is his most famous quotation. This may or may not be foreshadowing.

And finally, the birds. They tweeter and flit inside the topiary bushes, making of each wall a cacophony of chirping noise. You hear them, all the time, but you do not see them. They stick close to the internal labyrinth of the interlaced branches of the topiary walls.

Books come terribly often to this part of the Labyrinth. Books have leaves, and the bushes have leaves. Stick your arm into any bush and you may pull out, not a fruit, but a book. It will likely be a book you loved from your childhood but now cannot remember the title or the author. Sometimes you dream of this book, and the memory of that story is so sweet it makes your waking hours a dream of delight for the four-and-twenty hours following. It may be a book that never existed, it may be a book you read in your dream. It may be a book your dreaming mind has made. Lost books come here, the sweeter the quicker. Being sweet, they are quickly devoured by the hidden birds who chirp with delight as they eat away at the story and leave their excrement for the roots of the Disobedient Topiary.

Every book there is a door to another world.

Every door there leads to a different story.

_n. b_. On the Hat. It too is a bird and determined to eat books. But its taste is so rarefied that, like a coffee snob wanting only the brew of Jacu Bird beans (The author here could prompt you to do research on this term, but does not trust you to do it. You didn't look up the Cumaean sibyl, did you? Go look her up. Meanwhile, note that Jacu Bird coffee beans are harvested from the excrement of avian creatures who enjoy the succulent outer pod of the beans.) the Hat only appreciates information which costs a high price. The Hat is an horrific information broker, selling junk wisdom for a high cost and getting, in bonuses, a cut of what the Old Man knows. It cannot fly. It wants to read through that throne of books terribly, but has, unfortunately, not the strength to turn the heavy pages.

Need I go on? While the Precinct of the Disobedient Topiary appears to be the most restful and lovely of all the Precincts of the Labyrinth, it is an endless stew of noise and consumption and exchange. Listen for those birds, and keep one hand over your nose--if you stick it in other peoples' business it may well get pecked off.


	6. Precinct the Fifth: The Junkmidden Orbit

**Precinct the Fifth: Junkmidden Orbit**

In which is described:

the origins of the midden-piles which ring the Goblin City

a theory as to how the junk preceded the Goblins and not the reverse

notes on an archaeological dig

an interview with one of those Goblins who undertake the collection and sorting of such junk

one author's experience while held in captivity with a flowerpot, a ragdoll, and half a game of Travel Yatzee.

.

.

.

In a hot summer in the previous century, I went to a country festival and, on the borders of the entrance, there was a labyrinth. At the center, a beautiful collection of junk: cigarette-paper origami, shiny marbles, plastic cars, prismatic candies. One was to take a thing, and leave a thing, and the thing is the symbol for wisdom.

Of course, the items themselves are just junk.

Is there something you loved as a child, or even as an adult? Maybe it was a stupid nothing presented to you. A stuffed animal, a keychain, a bauble, a tchotchke? Jumbled together with the trash it would not raise an eyebrow. Sorted together on sale for 99 cents, it would raise no curiousity either. But it was something you loved, something you had, which was then lost. It is a piece of junk, whose importance lay in its context of emotional relationships, not in its context of usefulness.

You are much better off to have lost such a thing. Don't dwell on it; let it go. It is just a thing. And it, and things like it, go somewhere where they are all eventually treasured and loved. Don't worry about the things. There's a place for lost things.

A "midden" for those not familiar with archeological terms, is another word for "junkyard," but with less savory connotations. It can include kitchen scraps, corpses, and excrement. It is related in flavor to the old meaning of Armageddon, that plain on which the Armies of Revelation will assemble for their final mortal battle. This Armageddon is El Megiddo, the midden that lay outside the city walls of Jerusalem. Occasionally, the refuse plains would be lit afire. The combination of the low putrescent reeks of decomposing flesh and substance with the somnulent flickering fires combined in a vivid real template of later conceptions of Hell.

"Trash," "Dust," "Junk" and "Crap" are therefore words all united in covering a layer of letters over the very real and very disgusting reality of this Precinct. No import: words come here, too.

The Junkmidden Orbit is one of those peculiar places which is many places simultaneously. Its red-sea-walls of rotted cloggy mess (and the stink, too terrible to truly attempt to describe) lets out on Love Canal. It opens up on the mass graves of Auschwitz. It is on the same path as the vacuum-hosed trucks which plumb the gutters of New York and Los Angeles, the peat-bog criminal burial places, and Dickensian Potter's Fields.

It also is rumored to have an egress upon Sesame Street, a pocket door guarded by one O.T. Grouch. This door is encased in the quaint cylindrical corrugated pewter barrel and the hobbit-hole within is as vast as the Taj Mahal and magestic as Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village. This bottle vilage, along with Rhodia's Watts Towers, the House on the Rock, and the Winchester Mystery House are all also windows upon the Junkmidden Orbit.

This precinct surrounds the Goblin City, and predates the city's arrival. The Goblins made extensive use of it, though, intensely interested in insanity, and art. Not having these natural capacities, Goblins tend to be intensely interested in being, seeing, and the processes of cohesion and discorporation.

Another word for Midden is "Crap," or other words more scatalogically obscene. Crap. Excrement. And Junk is of a kind of Crap, and Junk has other connotations, of the phallicaly obscene. But we shall stick to the matter at hand. That matter is crap.

In other origin stories, the world is made by a creature diving into the confused depths and bringing back some excrement under his nails. From this excrement, the world is formed. In another story, the great smelly decomposing carcass of Tiamat is cut in two, forming the earth and sky. The Christians, Jews, and Muslims have their Garden of Eden, and although no specific mention of fertilizer is made, one can assume that fertilizer is there; the best kind, being crap.

Crap is the stuff you have that you don't necessarily want any more. It has outlived its purpose (if it can be said to have a life) and must now pass out of the body physical or environs domicile or the network neurological.

It must be mentioned that when LSD arrived on the scene, headcleaning trippers (including the Beatles!) left so much mental crap behind that the entire precinct of the Junkmidden Orbit tripled in size and now came to include the acid-eaters' ideas, fantasies, and feelings which soon formed into packs and went rabid and feral.

Every natural ecosystem develops regulatory adjustments and invites in creatures who can exploit the situation. In the days of the dinosaurs, for example, dung beetles evolved. The resource they exploited was excrement, breaking the fewmets into manageable pieces and spreading them about where the environment could more easily incorporate this useful matter at one time. The dung beetle is notorious for roaming about wheeling a great (for the beetle) ball of crap wherever it goes. In the Labyrinth, this function is performed mainly by Agnes.

There are many of them, but they are all named Agnes.

According to Terry Jones and Brian Froud, after the Collapse of Good Govenrance, the goblins known as Agnes inhabit "The Wide Tract of Rottenness" (an alternative name for a subsection of the Junkmidden Orbit) where they colect "empty promises, hollow opinions and worhtless public statements" among other even less savoury things, which are then polished up and resold "to the ambitious and unscrupulous of all ages" (60). It is the metier of Agnes, Agnes, Agnes, and all the Agnessi to scavenge and collect among the junk of this precinct. Their meanderings create ragged and sometimes steep pathways through the Midden. For the Labyrinth, their purpose may be to make these ways through the inscrutable and insurmountable junk, making the way clear. For Agnes herselves, the joy is the joy of collecting.

I had the opportunity of speaking with Agnes one afternoon while working as a volunteer with a social service organization which assists with cluttered houses. This organization more often deals with those who are hoarders and bent, for reasons of insanity or artistry, on recreating scale models of the Junkmidden Orbit in their homes. I discovered Agnes wedged between a rag doll which was slowly disintegrating into the cardboard sludge at the nether end of a great pile, sitting comfortably on the velvet body of a mummified cat, using a broken flower-pot as a tea-table.

I took great care in conducting this interview. I wanted to know, for instance, why her name could be Agnes and why there could be another goblin of her type who was also Agnes. By way of bribery, I offered a false premise for her consumption. She smacked her lips on it greedily and proceeded to answer.

Etymologically, this Agnes explained (the Angessi are great collectors of archaic definitions too), the name Agnes comes from the Greek, meaning "pure or holy." Something of my facial expression (it was VERY smelly in this house and moreso in proximity to this Agnes, and my nose may have wrinkled in nausea, not disbelief) prompted her to expand that purity, or holiness, meant at heart something which was set apart. So the Agnessi who constantly move through the Labyrinth's Junkmidden Orbit are acting in accordance with their names, setting apart what they see as treasures from what others see as trash.

Agnes holds out a glittering emerald, flawless as colored glass, a deep thick green, big as my thumbnail. "Elizabeth Regina," mutters Agnes. She explains that this emerald, along with enough jewels to fill Mozart's childhood violin, were dropped over the course of almost sixty years from the body of Gloriana herself, dropped and lost as she went on progress from one royal palace to another. "My collection is near enough complete," says Agnes happily. She pulls the violin in question off the turtle-shell pile on her back.

I asked her where the Agnessi came from.

Most were goblins, she allowed, natural Agnessi. But sometimes human people were more than usually susceptible to their practices, and could be impressed into the ranks. She cited an incident, familiar to this author, of a youngwoman who came to the Junkmidden orbit with a network of incredibly interrelated and rich emotional connections to her junk. Her connection with her junk was so intense that her junk came, all neat and packaged like a diorama, into the Junkmidden Orbit itself, waiting for her. Her things, her things. Agnes had attempted, in this case, to assist the young woman in strapping and piling this important collection to her back where she could keep it forever.

There are various Angessi, male and female, who came to permanently reside in the Junkmidden Orbit by being piled up with their junk. Agnes mentions an Agnes whose name was once Tutankhamen, and another nee Henry Darger. That last collection is a particularly beautiful area of the Junkmidden Orbit, made of color and scrap-paper trees where the Vivian Girls endlessly wage their loving war on the Glandelinian hordes.

I came to realize that to be an Agnes was to be a collection.

"And, of course, there is the Castle."

This was surprising information, completely unsolicited. But having something of a collector's nature myself, I attempted to learn more. The Castle, the Castle Beyond the Goblin City, the Royal Seat of the Goblin King Himself--this, part and parcel with the Junkmidden Orbit?

"Not the heart of the Castle," Agnes assured me. "The heart of the castle was there before the castle. But the castle itself? There since long ago. Fell off the back of the Elephant and sat there, and no one could move it since."

This was truly something! Agnes offered to carry me with her on her back into the Junkmidden Orbit, since the house of the hoarder was rapidly becoming unsuitable to her. No one noticed my absence, or Agnes, when she instructed me to clamber atop her collection and come along.

I admit I was foolish, but opportunities to enter the Labyrinth as a tourist are so rare as to be worth taking.

"Well, you're hardly smart," said a little voice beside me. For a moment I took it for my own voice. I looked around and saw a rat of the normal type, staring at me with unusually compassionate and intelligent eyes. "Melchisedek," he said, as an introduction, "Forgotten but faithful friend of the Princess Sara."

I immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion.

"Not THAT Sarah. The other Sara. Sara Crewe, the little princess who was left at the hands of the cold and worldly Maria Minchin, a pauper and scapegrace of the Select Seminary, who kept her honor and her humanity in reduced circumstances because ... she was a princess. THAT Princess Sara."

I apologized profusely to the rat, Melchisedek.

"When she came back into her kingdom, the Princess Sara forgot me. And as I was loved, and named, I was able to find my way here. My Agnes has a fondness for lost love. Has a pocket full of it, all jumbled together, and she makes snares out of all of it. When you see a girl whose boyfriend hits her, when you see a boy whose mother tells him he's worthless, and wonder why these big children don't run away--they can't. They've been snared. You've been snared."

I indicated that I was here of my own free will, with an excellent view now of the entire Precinct at my disposal, not bound by any cords.

"Whatever you say," sniffed Melchisedek. "Care for a game of Yahtzee?"

"The Castle," Agnes informed us halfway through our game. "This Wide Tract of Rottenness, this Elysian Field of Beauties--this is the center of the Labyrinth, true enough. The Castle was here and so was the wide ring and *plop* came down the Goblin City, like a cartwheel, fencing this center ring-around-a-rosy." She pointed with an arthritic, yellowed hand.

"So, does the Goblin City show where the Junkmidden ends, or is the Goblin City just another part of the junk at the center, just part of the full collection?"

"Oh, yes," said Agnes. "You can find all that out if you just stay a while with me here. The whole history and meaning of the Labyrinth is here! Everything you ever wanted to know about the whole place, about yourself, about everything is right here, right here. Look, see." She took out a long knobbled walking-stick from the bundle over her left shoulder and probed one of the massive mounds until it broke apart, disgorging an old record album: not dirty from time or burial among the other glittering junk, but from memory. Carlos Santana's ABRAXAS, an album from my parents' collection of music when I was small. It was the very same album, still bore the imprint of my baby teeth where I'd chewed upon it before I learned to look at it. This talisman worked on my imagination. I could discover the entire meaning of my life here by finding the lost artifacts which marked my experiences.

Agnes gave me a covetous look of speculation. If I were to become a collector, she would watch me collect.

"Catch you," said Melchisedek derisively. "You're for it now and no mistake."

I looked away before I could be even tempted to touch anything. I thanked Agnes very much for her guidance and information and made bitter haste for the next nearest Precinct.

The Junkyard Midden is by far the most perilous place ever imagined, and I have spoken about it for far too long. But its fascinations keep pulling my mind back. I could too easily become Agnes.

* * *

_A.N._: Direct quotations, where noted, are from Froud, Brian and Terry Jones. The Goblins of Labyrinth. New York: Abrams, 2006.

_A.N._2: Those interested egresses to our world noted in this chapter, especially Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village, Rhodia's Watt's Towers, and the House on the Rock are invited to undertake their own research on these places; color photographs do them better justice than text.


	7. Precinct the Sixth: The Goblin City

**Precinct the Sixth: The Goblin City**

In which is described:

That Very Goblin City, of primary fame for preceding the Castle which lies Beyond it

historical origins of that city

how it is that the Goblin City's foundation postdates that of the Castle

brief and disturbing notes on the domestic life of the Goblin Citizen

_.  
_

.

.

In the time after the Collapse of Good Governance, Goblins came to the Labyrinth.

Goblins eat children. This is a known fact. They eat children and they eat other, less savory fare, too. The word Goblin is, after all, the same root word, in the English, as the verb _to gobble_.

They are loathsome creatures and, like bedbugs, exploit habitable space where there is opportunity to feed.

The Labyrinth, at that time, collected lost people. It collected discarded people. In certain times and circumstances, it collected babies. These are cruel things to relate. When parents, for whatever reason, saw fit to commit infanticide by exposure--if the baby was deformed, or strange, or born out of season, or unwanted--well then, the Goblins would have a feast.

This causes some confusion due to censorship in the Victorian era. Children taken by Goblins become Goblins by dint of being EATEN by Goblins--and these children did not survive the transformation. Being dinner is usually fatal.

Sometimes the goblins wouldn't wait. Sometimes they would steal infants from cradles and make a feast. To double up on this cruel trick, they would substitute one of their own for the missing baby. Goblins nursed at human breasts would bite and pinch, and grow tall and unnaturally strong. A mother who nursed such a changeling would find all her milk dried up ever after, a famine for future children.

And so, when rumor spread that this particular Labyrinth (There are others. There are many others) was becoming occupied by Goblins, the Uncrowned King was informed. He was, naturally, upset. As though some beautiful garden, ungoverned and wild and lovely and secluded, had been stripped bare and transformed into something open and vulgar. Of course, no one can demand a King, even an uncrowned one, do anything.

"Something must be done."

_Nothing needs be done_.

"They must be stopped!"

_Then it falls to you to stop them_.

He hung his head and wept.

At that time, the Goblin City was built around the perimeter of the Castle. In this City, the ragged remnants of their great armies. The Sullentoe Cavalry, the Mangle Hoplites, the Brass Myrmydons, Humungous, and the retreated remnants of the Horde from the Battle of the Five Armies. These Goblins were vicious and martial and set about building their city as if they were making war on mortar-and-daub.

There were others. There were Goblins hordes less military in nature but just as virulent. Finger-creepers, Red-caps, Slinkers, Wool-gatherers, and more. Every corner of the castle seemed full of noisome activity. The Goblins quickly inhabited the outer courts of the castle, fearing the inner heart of the Labyrinth, but drilling holes and tunnels and passages and shortcuts and balustrades and balconies and catwalks and murder-holes all throughout the outer keep.

And the Uncrowned King came to the Labyrinth. He was pinched and poked and badly used. But he came to the heart of the castle and the heart of the Labyrinth and sealed all the doors behind him. Naked as the first time he'd fallen into his future realm, they laid his head on the stone and pulled the hair from the crown of his head. And one-and-two and snicker-snack, they hacked off his hair all uneven. Those were terrible days, the days of the crowning of the Goblin King. But it was his labyrinth by then, and he was Jareth, an unwanted name for an unwanted kingdom.

A hard thing to be so shackled. But all monarchs in those sorts of realms have unlimited passage at least twice a year--at midwinter, and at midsummer. In the meantime, subduing and domesticating the goblins, and realizing that there was indeed no potential end to his kingdom--_labyrinth, my labyrinth_--these things sufficed for freedom.

* * *

_Author's Note:_ Herein are six of the thirteen Precincts promised. Look for the continuing transcription of the Triskedekephelion with the remaining seven precincts, in part II.


	8. Prologue, Epigraphs, and Introduction II

_**Next presented here are the epigraphs of Precincts Seven through Precincts Thirteen**_

_**All the Labyrinth is parsed by various precincts, places in and of themselves. Some of these precincts are in the realm of life, others in death-and others in-between. Some are places of appraisal, and other of desire. All are places where the scales of judgement balance, and the verdict given in perfect and terrible love.**_

_**Caveat Emptor.**_

_**Precinct the Seventh: Queen's Meander**_

_**In which is described a Precinct where the Goblin King fears to look; the Dwarf's slippery name and unfulfilled function, and a collection of jewels.**_

_**Precinct the Eighth: The Oubliettes**_

_**Where is described the Hall of Hecatonchires, the Crystal Ballroom, the Throne, and one other, and the Uncertain End of each.**_

_**Precinct the Ninth: The Brickwork Barrows**_

_**In which is described the forlorn habitations of dead Kings and Queens, the laudable invention of bricks, the Oracular Lichen, and the singular way seeming without doors or openings.**_

_**Precinct the Tenth: Mount Surmount**_

_**In which that who is the mountain removes the mountain; the stone where Utnapishtim landed his boat of reeds: the steps which approach the Throne of Heaven; the tomb under which the Good King sleeps; Plymouth Rock, the Stone of Destiny, and the Shell of the Great Turtle; Ludo.**_

_**Precinct the Eleventh: The Bogs**_

_**In which is described the fecund and feculent wetlands of the Bog of Eternal Stench beyond the Goblin City, adjacent to the Swamp of Sadness and abutting upon the Black River of Thra; the Valiant Knight of the Bridge; the Ass-End of the Axis Mundi and the sacred soil beneath the Earth-Divers' nails; the Gardener who is Prince of the Land of Stench and what he did there.**_

_**Precinct the Twelfth: The Four O'Clock Doors**_

_**In which is described the particular and peculiar gates of the stonework outer wall; Persephone's Blossom, radishes, wells, and the Holy Moly; the Fortnight Desert, Cherlindrea's refugees, the Nome King's adjacent war, and the Quicksands of Time.**_

_**Precinct the Thirteenth: The Shattered Stair**_

_**The very utmost core of the Labyrinth, where all things are judged according to their qualities, and the Judge deals in matters of absolute truth. The way forward is the way back; the leap of faith. The relativity of "lost and lonely" to "discovered and loved." The verdict on Sarah Williams.**_

_**…and there is yet more. This is only one piece of the whole. Reader, be wary. Reader, be loved.**_


	9. Precinct the Seventh: Queen's Meander

**_Precinct the Seventh: Queen's Meander  
_**_  
In which is described:  
a Precinct where the Goblin King fears to look  
the Dwarf's slippery name and unfulfilled function  
a collection of jewels._

There is a place in the Labyrinth where the Goblin King refuses to look.  
It is the place of fidelity and perfect trust. It is the seat of Love.

She-loves-me She-loves-me-not; the complimentary duality of the Queen's Meander Precinct has been irretrievably sundered into two broken halves of yes/no, is/isn't. But when it was first made, it was the most lovely land in the whole of the Underground Kingdom, and very close to Jareth's heart.

The Queen's Meander was once a place of perfect order in the shifting vagaries of the overall un-pattern. One simply turned to the left, or to the right, and one came through easily and without effort. It was a singular path with only one exit, and felicitous pairings of doors, and the ways were wide and peaceful, the walls low enough that the walker could catch sight of his beloved's face between the finials of the joints, and joyfully pursue and find her.

It was the path in the form of the Greek Key, the river of love, the double-helix of mated DNA. Everywhere were the obelisks in praise of maleness, orbs of yonic perfection, and hands clasped in friendship and devotion. Like love, in places the walls widened. Small ornamental gardens of living jewels and firework fountains played for the sheer delight of life and love, to bring pleasure to the face of the beloved, and have the spectacle reflected in the golden walls and the adoring eyes of the lover.

In the days when he was the Uncrowned King, he had it built for his Queen. The dwarvish masons carved the blocks from the golden stone of the roots of the mountain. It once had the color of joy. Now its jewelry precision has worn to the color of dust.

When it was finished, only one dwarf remained after taking his pay. "A jewel," he said, surveying it with wonder, as if he himself had no hand in creating it.

"How would you like a job?" the Uncrowned King asked him, flattered by his admiration for the design. "You can be the Queen's Usher, and open every door, save one, for her."

"I'd like that fine, I reckon," said the dwarf. "But mind you, I get to keep my Name. You could hear it a thousand times and never remember. But I'll serve Her Majesty gladly. When can I meet her?"

The Uncrowned King had laughed. "A little after I do, as I haven't met her myself yet. There'll be time for that when I return from my coronation. Until then, guard the doors and open them when you're asked. Amuse yourself in any way you like."

The dwarf stroked his beardless chin. "Might be I'll take up gardening until His Majesty brings the Queen," he said.

He brought several into the Garden of Love, but Thou Shalt Not was writ over the doors.

_and priests in black gowns were making their rounds; and binding with briers my joys and desires. –William Blake_

Because when he returned from the rituals that preceded his coronation, his heart was hurt and all his dreams and plans for his admittedly small but worthy kingdom had become distasteful. Women came. Many women. The most beautiful women of the Good People came to the Queen's Meander to disport with the Goblin King—and for fae women, the word "beautiful" is only a small word for the whole of beauty—but they left soon after. At first they left confused and confounded, and then some weeping and insulted, and finally they never left at all, because they never came. The heart of the Goblin King, it was rumored, was absent from his body.

And the walls of the Queen's Meander stretched and grew higher, and one by one the trysting-gardens fell into wreck or were pulled down by goblins for scrap, and the golden stones faded to the color of cold and unresponsive flesh. The perfect order and ease of the pattern devolved into chaos and cruelty. The stone hands that had clasped in friendship became mocking effigies of misdirection. For the Goblin King, he quickly grew disgusted with every iteration of love that the place had been built to house, and wished sincerely it had never been built, since it reminded him of a time when he had hope.

_He never surmised, not for an instant, that the fault might lie in himself, and in the turning path between his hope and his disappointment; he had never thought to court a woman who might be able to heal his hurt, or match his will. That was the very heart of his fear—to be healed, to be opposed, to be bound-and the thing that prevented Love from being unbound and setting the Precinct to rights._

The dwarf, whose Name he kept as a present to himself from the Uncrowned King, waited and watched in hope that a Queen would be quickly found. He was once quite brave, but witnessing all the perversions of sweetness and desire that His Majesty visited upon the potential Queens made his heart cold with fear. The Dwarf was quite frightened of the King, and glad he'd thought to keep his Name. With sadness and a sense of thievery, he has magpie-picked up all the jewels, the rings and brooches and pendants and lavalieres and pins the beautiful women accidentally dropped left behind them, as they ran insulted, or angered, or weeping, away from the hateful pleasure-gardens of the Goblin King.

The Queen's Meander meandered away from the center into the very edges of the Labyrinth, and there it waits. There must be the hope of love, or the memory of the hope of Love for the Goblin King, because this Precinct has not been pushed outside completely.

In this Precinct, most famously, stand the Seneschals of the Gates, who pose riddles for the price of passage. Once upon a time, the questions they asked were meant to evoke praise and union between the lover and his beloved. The doors they guard would open together upon places of deeper enchantment. But now the doors open up on Certain Death, and a lightless prison—because that is what the Goblin King believed that Love must be.

_But he did, finally, look again, didn't he?_


	10. Precinct the Eighth: The Oubliettes

**_Precinct the Eighth: The Oubliettes  
_**_In which is written the nature of the Oubliettes in practice both philosophical and practical  
notably including the Hall of Hecatonchires, the Crystal Ballroom, the Throne, and one other,  
and the Uncertain End of each_

.

.

Cup your hands and hold them up; you are begging and offering in one gesture**. **Cup your hands and hold them down; you are discarding and concealing as well.

Now you understand everything there is to understand about Oubliettes. There are as many Oubliettes to the Labyrinth as there are hearts, and each one is a cupped hand emptied and a cupped hand filled at the same time. Only a few are of particular interest to the careful traveler.

"It's a place you put people to forget about them," the Dwarf had cautioned, but the Oubliette is also a place where you go to forget yourself. The infinitive form: _Oublier_, French: "to forget."

There are three Oubliettes, and possibly four, that the devotee to the traditional story might know, also knowing that the Labyrinth is as full of them as it is of sexual symbolism.

* * *

The most subtle Oubliette is the Throne of the Goblin King-one of those recurved cups which holds the wine of the soul. The omega arms of his raised throne cradle his body like a mother or a lover, but the Goblin King has neither. Behind it gleams the horned crown all in gold, the repeated emblem of his office—even if Jareth's head bears neither horns nor crown.

An Oubliette, it is also a prison, caging the thing inside for the dubious pleasure of the ones allowed to forget and remember. Like pursing a hard-to-get lover, the Goblin King pursued the path to the Throne of the Goblin Kingdom, only to find when he'd won it that it was nothing like how he'd imagined it might be. He found he belonged to the goblins and not the other way around. "Jareth is, at best, a romantic, but, at worst, he's a spoilt child, vain and temperamental. . . under duress" (1). The goblins do spoil and flatter and pinch him—they love him best of all things in all worlds anywhere. He's used to having his own way—which is actually _their_ way, twelve times out of thirteen. No mistake, the goblins have their King well in hand.

The throne is an Oubliette where the goblins keep their King, never forgetting that he is a King and _their_ King, but not wanting him to remember that he might be several other things as well. "One feels that he's rather reluctantly inherited the position of being Goblin King, as though he would really like to be—I don't know—down in Soho or something" (2)_. _The Goblins are jealous of their treasure, exceedingly jealous of loose talk about their fae King, driven to outright rampage at the idea of someone outside their purview remembering just what else he is and the power he's forgotten. On the throne, he sings to _them_, dances with _them_, consults and plays with _them_, enduring treatment that would pull a mortal mind and body to bits but only bruises the King very slightly. On the throne he can be remembered and disdained, kept on a short leash. The King cannot fail to remember the responsibilities of his Throne, but he also never misses an opportunity forget them, by flying like an owl toward humanity and night. _Memory. Self. Words._ Someone, someday, will hand those dreams back to him, but he's forgotten just how the right words of that story fit together.

* * *

The most obvious Oubliette is the Hall of the Hecatonchires, which styles itself helpful. The Hundred-Handed ones, the Hecatonchires assisted the Olympians in their battle to overthrow the Titans. The first children of Mother Earth and Father Sky, they were locked deep, deep in the depths of Tartarus until their Mother persuasively in the ear of Zeus. This Hecatonchires, the least and littlest certainly, is most likely Gyges Ouranid, or the forgotten fourth Hundred-Handed one.

_yes, given the nature of the Labyrinth as a refuge for the lost and lonely, it is probably a fourth brother who slipped beyond the prisons of Tartarus and landed, enchained, in the Labyrinth, which is itself an a curving ovarian follicle of Gaia's womb_

It is a very old thing, malicious but not particularly fierce, and dwelt in solitude for quite some time.

In the ten thousandth year of its imprisonment, the Hecatonchires in his cell began to talk, slowly, to itself. Loneliness is too great a burden for any creature to bear; look at Chuck Noland's friend Wilson, who was created out of blood and solitude from a volleyball. The Hecatonchires turned inward on itself, alimentary fetal formation in reverse, and gave a part of its broken consciousness to every one of its hundred hands. The terminus of its belly is fitted in sand and rock. When it encounters a stranger, these Helping Hands are just as likely to lift its victim out of the pit as swallow it down, ejecting it like sputum from its un-mouth. More often, though, the process of peristalsis draws the stranger down, down, into the stomach of the lonely, insane thing. Cries for help and for remembrance echo there in its gut, and it feeds very well on the rare meals of despairing cries for "Mother, Mother!" "Father Father!" "Lift me up, get me out of here!"

* * *

The most sought-after Oubliette is the Crystal Ballroom.

The fae have a marked contempt for humanity which reaches beautifully creative heights when they feel they've been insulted. The Uncrowned King of the Labyrinth, who all respectable persons know as Jareth, Goblin King, was more interested in humankind than all his type at that time, and therefore more aware of insult than any of his people. When he saw the pictures of the Cottingley Fairies, and heard what a din that mundane humanity was making over them, he did what any righteously angry creature in his position would do: he held a fete. The Crystal Ballroom was meant to be an antidote for cuteness, the bitter poignant taste of sex to cut through childish treacle.

Where was this party held? All places and none, a space between places, the door a porous membrane that, like a roach motel, allowed the human guests to check in but never check out. When was it held? Midnight to midnight with never a beginning or an end. Invited: everyone who was capable or interested in coming. They came: fragile mortals whose virginal longing for sexual delight would grasp them up into the game. They came: ravishingly beautiful women, the belles dames sans merci, the belly-tingling seductive men, demon lovers, incubi, succubi, fae—those cruel and glorious beings who understood the merit of breaking the human heart on the wheel of desire. Mirrors reflect the faces of the guests; masks mock the nudity of the bare-faced. Golden-skinned slaves offer platters of fruit and aphrodisiac thimbles of wine, and couches and pits and velvet flesh-pots are stages where ravishment is performed for the delight of the inhuman guests upon their human prey. All here is now, and never, and five minutes can become a lifetime. The coin that pays for the experience is memory, and no one can cheat the fee.

All the dances of desire are performed here. In particular, the waltz. The waltz is a scandalous dance. Other dances, older dances, allowed couples to meet only in the touch of eyes to eyes, hands to hands. The waltz is a reversal of this; the bodies of the dancers press close together along the length of breast and belly and groin, but the hands are filled and the eyes look elsewhere. It is a dance to lose your mind in the ecstasy of your body. A black-silk hip pressed close into the interstice of a white-voile thigh. The heat-seeking, stimulus-fleeing friction of partners who are pushed and pulled in a 3/4th sliding beat of time which is also a fall. The chafing frottage of naked jeweled décolletage against diamante-barbed frock-coat—little wonder the assembled voyeurs carry fans. Only the Devil wouldn't blush at such things.

In the Crystal Ballroom, the dark nucleus of the white bubble is Jareth, Goblin King. This is his party, his game, his offering. He draws the eyes and the hands of mortal and supernatural alike. He sings to the maidens and youths a song of desire, of himself and others moving inside them, changing them, breaking them open into configurations more pleasing. He sings of pain and praise to the broken hymen. He is adored by his own people, this much is clear. They care little whether he is a Goblin King or not; he is their youth, their beauty, their strength, and their treasure. He wants for nothing; they want everything for him. The Crystal Ballroom is a place where his memory of that fete lives an immortal life separate from his experience. He is there, and not there, and the dancing never ends. Sweet summer sweat: some dance to remember, some dance to forget. (3)

_But he doesn't wear his insignia of office in this Oubliette. Is it a place where he spends time away from his responsibilities to his Kingdom? Is it a place before or after or beyond his rule? Definitely an Oubliette, but is it a place for him to experience memory, or forgetfulness? Never ask him this; data indicates extraordinary danger considering events re: S.W._

_Yes, but he wears a mask in bronze, the shape of his amulet reversed. Yet it is separate from himself, not tied to his face or form. Is his mask his amulet?_

_Is his amulet his mask?_

* * *

_Is his amulet an Oubliette?_

* * *

Notes:

1. David Bowie: Interview: "David Bowie Talks." Movieline. /realm/?p=27  
2. David Bowie. Interview: Inside the Labyrinth.  
3. The Eagles. "Hotel California."


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